Google Page Speed Optimisation is a Waste of Time

There has been a huge shift in the way that website owners are creating their sites and the processes in which they undertake in order to try to create the most optimised site as possible for search engines like Google but reducing your page load speed is about more than simply removing large images and the utilisation of image sprites.

Following a questions and answer video created by GoogleWebmasterHelp on YouTube that features Matt Cutts covering the Google site speed issue, it has quickly become clear that reducing the time it takes to load your site is about more than simply things that you can control, even with careful planning and optimised development.

The video features a question by ‘DisgruntledGoat' from the UK who took the opportunity to ask Matt Cutts the following question in his quest to combat the page load issues on his site as shown within Google Webmaster Tools (GWT):

"How does Google determine page speed? In GWT some pages are listed as very slow (8+ seconds). But I have tested on older computers/browsers and they do not take anywhere near that long to load. Why might Google show such high numbers?"

Cutts explains how search engine giants Google consider toolbar data extracted from users that have opted into their research in order to take information surrounding the time that it takes for a particular site to load, revealing that there are other factors outside of the website that could well hinder the results of your statistics.

According to Cutts the data is drawn from the user and used within the raw form that they absorb from the search engine user, so if a visitor to your site has a weak internet signal, operates on dial up internet or simply has issues within their own parameter, the results that Google obtain reflect the drawn data without the elimination of such factors.

Although there seems to have been a huge push towards looking to reduce the page speed, Cutts revealed that there are only really "one in a thousand" sites that have any issues in relation to their page speed that could be big enough to affect their position within the search engine results, taking away some of the need to have the most efficient site on the internet.

Although looking to keep your website optimised is a very good form of practice to be showing, the need to have a highly optimised site in order to rank in top spot in Google is no longer a major factor, putting a cooling sensation on the battle cry to condense page after page of your website.

Although I strongly believe that Google are making large steps in the right direction following their latest alterations that are targeting low ‘value' sites, I think that using page speed as a factor when the testing grounds aren't completely level is a negative move from the internet giants and hopefully they will either look to eliminate such metrics as such any form of negative metric in relation to a site or they will work out a new methodology that would create a fairer testing ground for site owners.

See the video below:

Anyone know the code to seek internet connectivity speed of visitors so that I can block anything below 1Meg?

Clarification Edit –

I thought that I should make this small addition to the above post as it seems that I have been misunderstood by a few readers.

The point that I am trying to make about the page speed metric within the eyes of Google is that regardless of the work and optimisation that you put into the site, use of YSlow will never show you a true value of the speed that your site is offering to users as the data used to calculate the metric is affected by the speed at which a visitor has available to them in terms of internet connection.

Optimising the speed of your site is still important as you are looking to offer a good user experience for every visitor to your site but my point is that investing huge amount of time and money into reducing the metric results as seen by Google is time wasted creating the main objective of your site, informative and unique content.

By the comment that the optimisation of page speed is a waste of time, i mean that dedicating huge amounts of time to battle against the statistics that are shown to you within the likes of YSlow and GWT is time that could be better spent elsewhere within your development.

Alex Graves

Developing his SEO knowledge based on a 'quality over quantity' thesis, Alex believes that careful research and link acquisition is vital when working on projects, ensuring that each and every step taken is a positive one.

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15 Comments

Chris King - http://www.greenabode.co.uk

Alex

Glad and reassured to hear your take on Google and page speed. I don’t think I will be wasting any more time on it in for now.

In GWT my site is showing as slow but the data does not tie in with Google’s own page speed tool. I’ve even spoken to my web hosting team but they said straight away that the data in GWT is not accurate.

The past few weeks I have installed some plug ins and gone through my pages and reduced down image sizes..and made other tweaks. After getting a 25% points increase in the Google page speed % – it has not made any difference to the data in GWT.

I have asked my developer to look at some things to improve it as I have very limited development skills. I think I will de-prioritise this work now.

Cheers.

Alex Graves - http://www.footballinsight.org

Hi Chris,

Just to clarify the issue a little, you do need to look at keeping page size small and eliminating anything that is going to create lag on the site when the user accesses the pages, my point within this article being that solely using the metrics represented by Google is incorrect as their data source is not based on a level requirement.

If they took data from 100 people but out of that pool there were 60% that we still using a slow dial up connection, you would be getting worse results than you would if the data was taken from users that were all on broadband connections.

Alan Bleiweiss

I think there needs to be a better clarification of the concept of how page speed fits in the overall SEO realm – having a title that says speed optimization is a waste of time is itself quite misleading. It’s not a waste of time. No best practices are a waste of time – that’s terribly irresponsible to say. It’s a waste of time if there are ten other higher priority tasks that should be performed. It’s not a waste of time if Google reports slow speeds then that’s confirmed when you run reports on URIValet.com or Pingdom.com and get confirmation of dramatically low speeds.

And the larger the site, the more value speed optimization becomes in that priority list when you see consistent slow speeds running those tests.

It becomes even more accurate a consideration when you clarify the “one in a thousand” claim as well. If there are 500 million sites, that “one in a thousand” becomes 500,000 sites. Sure, that seems like a small amount. But think about it. If you see consistently slow speeds and Google, Pingdom and URIValet all report your site is slower than 80% of the web, the relatively insignificant amount of time it would take to make speed improvements should absolutely be one of your priorities.

As a final confirmation on this, more than one of the sites that came to me after they were Pandalized had speed problems and those that improved their speeds saw a bounce back in Google. So it’s NOT a waste of time.

Alex Graves - http://www.footballinsight.org

Hi Alan,

Thanks for the comment, seemed to highlight the need to add to the post as my intention was not to say that you should not be looking to avoid optimisation for page speed, just as Matt Cutts reveals in the video, that you should not be making it one of your primary issues within your development.

I have added a small section to the article that clarifies my point and shows that the purpose of the article is not to prevent development for speed but instead worry more about the informational content that you are providing to the user as the metrics that Google show are based on statistics that aren’t equal.

Alan Bleiweiss

Great clarifications Alex – I think that makes it much clearer and I agree completely – now that you’ve clarified, I can definitely state that anyone who ignores your insight would be chasing magic bullets.

Bas Debie

Hi Alex. I’m a frequent reader of your blog and I must say that this is the first time I don’t agree. Sure, you’re right..In terms of SEO page speed is not so important (at least at this moment). But, and this is where I disagree with you..I wouldn’t call it a waste, far from.. For user experience page speed is important. Also several studies make clear that a slight increase of speed can boost conversions..

Alex Graves - http://www.footballinsight.org

Hi Bas,

I have no doubt that the speed of which a website runs will boost the conversion rate of a site as i know from personal experience that slow loading sites have a high bounce rate and reduced sales figures.

I have added a section that clears up the point of my article, in that speed optimisation based on the statistics that Google show is time that could be spent ensuring that the rest of the optimisation of the site is done in such a way that your site ranks well.

Page speed is important when it comes to user interaction but the video seems to point out that Google are using data from sources that are not equal and so the results could be tainted by a number of people that are running on dial up connection or have issues within their own system.

Hopefully the clarification within the article makes a little more ground on the point in which i intended to make but thanks for the comment.

Mike Hudson - http://www.qnq.com.au

Alex, you’ve made an interesting number of points, but I feel you’ve looked at them from a narrow point of view and have been unintentionally selective in your reasoning. Specifically:
– “one in a thousand websites are affected” translates to millions upon millions of websites – lets not trivialise the number
– optimising your site speed performance just to appease the Google is the wrong reason. If you’re doing it just for a ranking increase, then you’re barking up the wrong tree.
– there’s enough data and case studies out there to show the numerous benefits of having a fast/responsive site – if ranking slightly higher is a side-benefit, then it’s a welcome one.
So I think (unless you’re positioning this as link/flame bait) this is a missed opportunity by you and the Bronco team to evangelise the obvious benefits, but maybe add some balance in terms of it’s prioritisation (against other improvements).

Alex Graves - http://www.footballinsight.org

Mike,

A few interesting points that you are making here and one seems to back up the point of the article, the fact that page load speed should be more for the user than it is for the Google rankings based on the fact that the data taken is from a number of sources that aren’t on a level playing surface.

Obviously the benefits that come with having a fast loading site are user based and as pointed out above, sales conversions will be increased if the user is able to navigate a site with ease rather than having to wait for a few minutes each time that they move about the site.

In terms of the “One in a thousand” metric that is revealed in the video, we are unsure whether this number is a true representation of the issues that internet users are facing as that figure would mean that a huge amount of sites have the page load speed issue, something that should be eliminated with the use of improved coding of sites and templates.

My point is not that speed optimisation is completely wasting time, just that developing your site based on the figures that Google indicate is not hugely important as the metrics that they use are not 100% truthful of the user experience that all users see.

If someone is accessing your site via a slow dial up connection then they would be doing the same on any other site too, so their resolve to stay on a site would be higher than someone that has broadband.

Thanks for the input though.

Karen - http://www.eicher3531.in

Agree with Mike. Page speed is not just only the reason to increase serp, you need to optimize site for better user experience.

Steve - http://www.bronco.co.uk

Also, it has another indirect effect. The quicker it is, the more positive your usage data will be to affect your rankings too. Whatever amount of usage data there is affecting rankings atm, if your site loads slow for people and they can’t be bothered to wait and click back then that’s going to look bad for your site.

SLight

The message here has got to be Google knows that they are using poor data so they are only using it as a factor in the more extreme cases. Following on from Matt Cutts comments at Pubcon last week about the upcoming changes to the algorithm one thing is clear. Google are going after user experience hard. That may be why they are just taking the tool bar data, they don’t care what the true loading time is, they want to know how quickly it loads for the sites actual end users.

Also this looks more like a test than anything else, Google can’t use it as a ‘live’ ranking factor as the data isn’t live. It comes in as and when according to when toolbar users who give up their data happen to go to the site.

What I would say though is that Google are only going to be spending more time on UX and not less. Just because it isn’t a proper ranking factor right now doesn’t mean it won’t be next year/month/week

Tad Miller - http://search-mojo.com

We see a direct correlation between site speed and indexing by Google. This can make a huge difference for a retailer with thousands of product pages. The faster the site is the more pages indexed in our site maps by Google. The slower the site speed the fewer the pages indexed in our site maps by Google. It’s the difference between getting pages deep within your site found or never found. Optimizing site speed is not a waste of time from an SEO standpoint at all.

Mark - http://www.websearchengineranking.com/

Thanks for the clarification. For a while there, I thought you were advocating eschewing altogether page speed optimization. I’m also concerned that Google is actually taking external factors into their consideration of a site’s load speed which makes it a bit unfair as you have absolutely no control over those factors. However, as you and the others here pointed out, it’s best to look at speed optimization as a tool to improve user experience rather than to please Google. Fully agree with this.

Tim

And, something that has been missed in here seems to be that by considering page speed, it forces the website to adhere to some other “quality” signal related aspects of website design, something that google seems to be considering more and more.
Just one example is giving images height and width attributes.
So by doing page speed optimisation you are doing more things that flag your site as “quality”. These “secondary” benefits can have flow on effects.

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